Facebook’s Latest Mobile Experiment Is Autoplaying Videos With Sound

Facebook is currently conducting a little mobile experiment regarding how videos work on the social network. The latest one might not be so pleasing for everyone.

Facebook Is Experimenting With Autoplaying Videos With Sound On By Default

If you come across a video on Facebook, you already know it plays back by default. Of course, you have the option to turn the feature off and choose to have video play only when you interact with it. But the point here is – Facebook knows video is the future and it needs to do all it can in its power to enhance the experience even further.

How it is doing that so far? Well, by autoplaying videos as soon as they come into view on your News Feed, like we mentioned above. But as a default behavior, audio is muted, until you tap on the video. Interestingly, Facebook is currently experimenting with a new type of initiative where videos would play as they would currently, but with the sound turned on.

Now, before you go into a complete meltdown, you would be pleased to learn that this is just an experiment, for now at least, and limited to those who are living in Australia. It’s also likely that this experiment might not end up expanding to other places either.

Here’s what Facebook has to say on the matter in a statement to Engadget:

“We’re running a small test in News Feed where people can choose whether they want to watch videos with sound on from the start. For people in this test who do not want sound to play, they can switch it off in Settings or directly on the video itself. This is one of several tests we’re running as we work to improve the video experience for people on Facebook.”

If you’re living in Australia and are always flabbergasted by the sheer sound your phone or tablet makes whenever you stumble across a video, then be sure to check out our guide posted here. You just have to follow a few simple steps and you can mute things in no time.

Wrap Up

As much as we love interacting with videos on Facebook, there’s no way people are going to admire videos that playback on their own with sound. Minus the sound bit and the routine sounds much more manageable and tolerable.